Wandering the Wastes
by Praeuaricator
Summary: A story of a young girl wandering the Wastes searching for something that she isn't sure of yet but will find eventually. Not based on sole survivor or lone wanderer. It is set in the fallout universe and follows new and old characters.
1. New world

"I guess I should feel lucky" the girl muttered to herself as the slightly irradiated sand whipped up and hit her face. She had brown hair done back in a pony tail, she also had a long fringe with some long strands of hair hanging down on either side of her face. She had some freckles and and a cute nose and mouth. Her eyes were green and on her right eyebrow a small gash disrupting the eyebrow causing a gap.

It was dark and the girl thought to her self, maybe I should go back, but common sense always won over and she continued walking. It was quite cold and the vault suit only insulated some of the cold so she was shivering every now and again. "Why the fuck am I here?" She kept saying to herself, but she knew why and she knew she needed to keep going. After a few hours of walking in the dark and tripping on shrubs she began to make out some shimmering lights on the horizon, 'thank god' she thought to herself.

As she neared she began to make out what looked like an amusement park ahead of her, there were coasters and large buildings and a mountain with a nuka-cola bottle on. When she got to the large, rusted gates she called "Anyone here, I'm kind of fucking lost!". After hearing no answer for what seemed like an hour she decided to try and climb the colossal gate. As she put her foot onto the the second elaborate metal bar she heard a noise, a slight knock of something. She waited there, suspended off the ground like a scared cat for a minute and then continued the struggle up the gate.

Suddenly two stuffed toy wearing weirdos with assault rifles jumped out from behind a beat up door and grabbed her, screaming, by the ankles, they pulled her down and then ran carrying her over the shoulders through a covered up entry to the park. They came out in what looked like a shantytown, rather ironically bustling with other weirdos. As she was struggleing she looked around at all of the other weirdos around her, they were behaving like this was a normal occurrence and we're paying no attention to her as they drank and chatted. She looked up just in time to see the butt of a gun smash into her forehead. She passed out.

She came to in a big building, what looked like a maintenance building. There was thick dust on the floor and broken ride parts and machinery around her. The two weirdos were there in front of her, the first one had a clipboard and the other had a gun.

"What the fuck do you want?" The girl shouted at them, a piece of bloody spit coming out of her mouth.

"Firstly we want your name." The one with the clipboard asked fairly normally.

"An-an-an 'nen we wants yours body as slave." The other one said fanatically laughing to himself.

"My name is Ellen and I am not going to be your fucking slave."

"You've got a bad mouth missy." Clipboard said slyly while tutting her with his finger.

"Y-y-you swearing to muchs an we don like dat." Gun said, dancing around crazily.

"Shut up." clipboard said sternly to gun.

"N-n-no yous always does the talks an I want to." Gun stuttered in defence.

As the two hot headed raiders began arguing Ellen quickly snatched up all she could around her as the ropes around her feet were tight but all the other knots were loose allowing her to wriggle her arms free. She grabbed a lighter, a pouch of a weird looking powder, a Walther PPK (rather stupidly left on the side) and a weirdly shaped key on a string which she hung around her neck. She quickly crammed the rest into her pocket just as the the two weirdos stopped bickering and walked up to her.

"Goodnight." Clipboard uttered as gun thrush the butt of the gun into Ellen's face again.


	2. Introductions

She awoke in a large tent alone by a fire, she got up and looked around and saw cloth sleeping bags everywhere but she felt weird. She looked down and saw that she was wearing some tattered rags for clothes and had a metal collar on with a red flashing light. "Fuck!" She shouted as a girl of similar age walked in "Oh sorry." She quickly said not meaning it at the girl. The blonde girl approached her and sat down.

"Don't worry." She said "That was exactly my reaction to." She was wearing exactly the same clothes Ellen was. "My names Candice, what's yours?" She said smiling.

"Um, Its Ellen." Ellen uttered, confused.

"I'm sorry." Candice replied "it's always exiting when a new person arrives and we forget how fast it all comes on to them." Ellen started tugging at the collar. "Don't do that!" Candice quickly shouted at Ellen "It will explode!"

"Oh shit." Ellen said getting her hands quickly away from it.

"Yeah, I know right. But as long as you don't touch it you will be fine." Candice said with all the reassurance she could give.

"What the fuck is this place?" Ellen asked.

"This piece of shit amusement park is nuka-world. The biggest raider camp ever, probably."

"I'm sorry, I come from a vault so this is all new to me."

"No way, hold on then why are you here?"

"My vault got overrun by dinosaur like animals with massive claws."

"Holy shit, Deathclaws!"

"That's a suitable name I guess."

"Did your family get out?"

"I don't know, my dad was overseer so maybe he got out but my mum... she... she, didn't ." Ellen burst into tears

"Jesus, I'm so sorry." Candice replied emphatically.

"But I can't change that now. Gotta look forward." Ellen said, gathering herself.

Trying to change the subject Candice quickly asked "Do you have a pip-boy?"

"Yeah but it don't work, the core powering it broke while I was trying to get out."

"Still so cool." Candice said in awe. Suddenly the intercom crackled to life.

"Wake up, you little shits. Prepare for a full day of trading and someone teach the new bitch how to work or else they'll get outed." The intercom screamed.

"Follow me." Candice said as she got up and ushered out the tent.

As Ellen peeled back the grimy tent flap she was blinded by the bright sun light shining in her eyes, this was the first time she had seen the sun as it was night when she got out the vault and she had only ever seen pictures of it occasionally in books in the vault. It was way brighter than she thought. She looked down and saw what looked like a market place with people, whom she could only guess were other slaves like her, bustling around, setting up stalls selling different things. One sold clothes, one sold food, one sold chems and so on. But one stall was empty, the weapons stall.

"I guess your on weapons." Candice said to Ellen.

"If you have weapons why are you still here?" Ellen asked looking at the stockpile of weapons for sale.

"Go ahead and try take on hundreds of raiders." Candice replied sarcastically.

"We could sneak a weapon out every day and soon we may be able to take them by surprise." Ellen said, desperate for something.

"No, they count the caps and make sure everything is paid for."

"Then we could buy them."

"If we had the caps."

"Oh." Ellen muttered sadly.

"Working on the stall is easy, just don't let people have something for a cheaper price and definitely not free." Candice said changing the subject again. Ellen fumbled in her pocket and pulled out a large bag full of bottle caps.

"How did you get those?" Candice whispered quickly, grabbing the bag and hiding it under her shirt.

"I dunno, I just found it in my pock-."

"Danny!" Candice exclaimed, interrupting Ellen mid speech. "He's a raider who doesn't want to be like this anymore so he said he'd help us escape if we took him with us."


	3. The mysterious man

As Candice looked frantically around for Danny, Ellen decided to go and speak to some other people in the market. She approached a thin, raggedy, blonde haired boy.

"Hello?" She asked him.

"Yeah, what, me, I'm bug, what's your name, sorry, didn't mean to be rude, sorry, sorry." He answered embarrassedly.

"Woah, calm down I just wanted to say hi"

"I shouldn't have talked should I." He quickly scampered away.

"My names Ellen by the way." She called after him, even though well out of earshot. "Jeez, I didn't thought I looked that scruffy." She muttered to herself. She walked over to the weapons stand, having given up talking to people after that incident, and started looking at the weapons for sale. There were AK's and pistols and sub machine-guns, all with many different attachments. There were also energy weapons like laser rifles, plasma shotguns and a Gatling laser. But thing that really caught her eye was huge, 50cal rifle, sitting loud and proud in the middle of the table. She touched it on the top and could feel the immense amount of powers contained in such machinery, she had always loved guns and was always at the range in her vault whenever she had free time.

While she was lost in memories of the past and admiring the rifle she didn't notice that the market was open and that people were coming in. She was pulling back the bolt when a voice spoke infront of her.

"She's a lovely gun isn't she." The stranger uttered from the other side of the stall, indicating to the gun.

"Yeah..." Ellen replied uneasily.

"Don't worry, I'm just like that around amazing guns as well but I hate to break it to you, I'm gonna need that back." The stranger said casually.

"Your going to need to pay for it." Ellen said sternly, remembering Candice's advice.

"Yeah...No." the stranger answered calmly.

Ellen looked up. The stranger spoke with a subtle British accent behind a full head helmet with a red star on the side and wore a bullet resistant vest and long trench coat.

The stranger continued "Tell your boss that it's Redstar here and that if he doesn't give my fucking rifle back to me this entire place is as good as... Well, he knows what."

Ellen, slightly taken back from the outburst, ran over to Candice who was standing by her stall.

"There's a guy here, and he wants a gun for free and he says that it's his anyway."

"Come on, your not stupid, he's probably just made that up to trick you."

"Oh yeah, he said his name was Redstar. Prob-"

"Your kidding, right?" Candice interrupted, shocked and white in the face. She glanced over at the stranger loading up the rifle. "Oh fuck!" Candice quickly exclaimed after spotting the telltale helmet star on the right side.

"Oh fuck about what?" Ellen asked, still confused.

"He's a legend of the waste, but one of the more real ones. He's singlehandedly fought battles against Caesars Legion, The Grey Circle and the Enclave. He's killed thousands of people with that rifle and is notorious among anyone known to be involved in deep shit as he leaves no enemies alive and shows no mercy." Candice explained quietly.

Ellen looked at him, "He sounds like a big deal."


	4. A breif conundrum

Candice turned to Ellen, "Trust me, if he's real and standing there then shits about to go down."

"In a good way?"

"Maybe."

"I thought you said he definitely was real?"

"Yeah but some people may lie and exaggerate and most either believe that its multiple people under one name or that Its-"

Before Candice could finish a thundering gunshot sounded and a raider's head erupted into a pink-red mist of skull fragments and blood. All eyes in the market turned on the stranger, holding his smoking barreled rifle pointing at where the raiders head had been. It took some raiders a double-take and others were just purely shocked that someone would do that within Nuka-World, and by the time any of them realized what they needed to do the stranger was already picking them off one by one. They also soon realized that all the weapons on the stall were gone and lasers, plasma and lead was flying out in all directions from the wooden stall. As these events were taking place, Ellen and Candice moved around to the other side of the stall and were peeking their heads out to watch the chaos unfold.

After a few minutes of rapid shooting and shouting, it all suddenly stopped. The raiders waited, looking for any sign of life behind the bullet ridden stall. But there was none. The raiders came out from cover and slowly approached the stall. Ellen and Candice lifted their heads out from behind the stall completely to see whether the stranger had been hit or killed. The atmosphere grew tense as the first raiders started inching their way around the sides of the stall. Then they did it, they jumped out around to the other side of the stand and started blindly firing into the back board. After 5 seconds of full auto fire they stopped. The sawdust and dirt cleared out the air to reveal... Nothing. Until they peered down.

Sat on the floor in front of them was a small detonable explosive devise, not a major issue on its own, but with plasma cartridges and rockets duct taped to the side it became a rather large issue. BOOM! The stand was gone, the raiders around it, also gone and bits of raiders and plasma goo were raining down from the sky. Ellen felt a tap on the shoulder, she span around a swung a punch.

"You should really look before you swing." It was the stranger and Ellen's fist had just smashed into the side of his cold, steel helmet.

"Fuck!" Ellen squealed in agony to the feeling of punching metal and the surprise that the stranger was alive. He was crouching and in his hands he held a weird looking device.

"A stealth boy!" Candice exclaimed "That's so cool. I'm Candice by the way."

"Nice to meet you Candice. Yeah, I got the stealth boy a while back at rivet city and it's saved my ass on several occasions." The stranger replied, surprised at the technical knowledge of the slave girl. He turned to Ellen who was clasping her right hand with her left. "What's your name?" He asked.

"Ellen, and what about you because 'Redstar' can't be your real name. Can it?"

"It is well, at least back in the NCR they used to call me Redstar because when they found me as a baby all that I was left with was a red star bottle cap. But my friends used to call me Sam." Redstar explained.

"Ok Sam what's the plan?"

"What do you mean?"

"You have plan right?"

"No, I usually just make it up as I go and I wasn't exactly expecting to have to save a bunch of slaves."

"Seriously?"

"Yup, so grab your shit quick because I ain't waiting here forever."

"Yeah, we don't exactly have shit to grab." Candice interrupted.

Sam replied with a smirk "Look around you, this part of the world is briefly your oyster." After getting blank looks from both girls he quickly added "Grab whatever you want!" The girls then looked at each other briefly, then took off.


End file.
